About Dara
Dara Cooper is an activist, organizer, writer, and movement vibe curator. She is the co-founder and former executive director of the National Black Food and Justice Alliance (NBFJA) where she currently serves as strategic advisor and volunteers with NBFJA Blackademics. NBFJA is a coalition of over 40 Black-led organizations developing Black leadership, advancing Black-led visions for just and sustainable communities, and building institutions for Black food and land sovereignty. Under her leadership and with an amazing team, she helped to grow over $7 million in collectively governed resources, worked with members to launch a "Resource Commons Council" to collectively govern resources to protect and grow Black sustainable land space, establish a Blackademics arm (founded by leading Black farmer scholar, Dr. Monica White) to organize academics to support community based research needs, partnered with FAMU to establish a Center to train the next generation of sustainable farmers and land stewards, and helped to write ground breaking legislation including the Justice for Black Farmers Act which later led to Emergency Debt Relief for BIPOC farmers (that was passed but later challenged by white supremacists).
A founding member of the HEAL Food Alliance, Cooper also served on the Movement for Black Lives policy table and leadership team helping to write and launch the Vision for Black Lives. Dara currently serves as a member of the Kataly Foundation’s Environmental Justice Resource Collective, helping to distribute approximately $50 million to BIPOC environmental justice organizations around the country. She also served as an advisor for Solidaire’s $14 million Black Liberation Pooled Fund.
Dara is the former director of the NYC Food and Fitness Partnership based at Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation in Brooklyn, NY where she established one of the first farm to early care programs in the city. Prior to this work, Dara worked with Sheelah Muhammad and other leaders to launch and expansion of Fresh Moves (Chicago), an award winning mobile produce market with community health programming, which quickly became a nationally recognized model for healthy food distribution and community based self-determination and empowerment. Dara is a previous core member of Black Urban Growers where she helped to coordinate and host the annual Black Farmers Urban Gardening conference all over the country, a former board chair for Southeastern African American Farmers Organic Network (SAAFON), a former board member of the National Farm to School Network and a supportive member of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement.
Dara has a feature in and helped to curate Bryant Terry's Black Food, has co-authored an article with Dr. Ashanté Reese, “Making Spaces Something Like Freedom: Black Feminist Praxis in the Re/Imagining of a Just Food System," and has written a food hub report published by Race Forward among other writings. A former contributing editor for the Environment, Food and Sustainability section of Praxis Center, an online activist academic journal housed at the Arcus Center for Social Justice at Kalamazoo College, Cooper has received numerous fellowships and awards. Some of her awards and fellowships include a 2012 Uganda BOLD Food Fellowship, 2018 AFRE racial equity fellowship, 2018 James Beard Foundation Leadership Awardee, 2021 Southern Foodway Alliance John Egerton Awardee, a 2022 OSF Justice Rising Awardee, and was featured in Essence Magazine's 2019 Woke 100. She is a proud alum of Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity (BOLD) and a priest of Ṣàngó (of the West African Indigenous Yoruba Ifa tradition) for over 18 years.
A founding member of the HEAL Food Alliance, Cooper also served on the Movement for Black Lives policy table and leadership team helping to write and launch the Vision for Black Lives. Dara currently serves as a member of the Kataly Foundation’s Environmental Justice Resource Collective, helping to distribute approximately $50 million to BIPOC environmental justice organizations around the country. She also served as an advisor for Solidaire’s $14 million Black Liberation Pooled Fund.
Dara is the former director of the NYC Food and Fitness Partnership based at Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation in Brooklyn, NY where she established one of the first farm to early care programs in the city. Prior to this work, Dara worked with Sheelah Muhammad and other leaders to launch and expansion of Fresh Moves (Chicago), an award winning mobile produce market with community health programming, which quickly became a nationally recognized model for healthy food distribution and community based self-determination and empowerment. Dara is a previous core member of Black Urban Growers where she helped to coordinate and host the annual Black Farmers Urban Gardening conference all over the country, a former board chair for Southeastern African American Farmers Organic Network (SAAFON), a former board member of the National Farm to School Network and a supportive member of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement.
Dara has a feature in and helped to curate Bryant Terry's Black Food, has co-authored an article with Dr. Ashanté Reese, “Making Spaces Something Like Freedom: Black Feminist Praxis in the Re/Imagining of a Just Food System," and has written a food hub report published by Race Forward among other writings. A former contributing editor for the Environment, Food and Sustainability section of Praxis Center, an online activist academic journal housed at the Arcus Center for Social Justice at Kalamazoo College, Cooper has received numerous fellowships and awards. Some of her awards and fellowships include a 2012 Uganda BOLD Food Fellowship, 2018 AFRE racial equity fellowship, 2018 James Beard Foundation Leadership Awardee, 2021 Southern Foodway Alliance John Egerton Awardee, a 2022 OSF Justice Rising Awardee, and was featured in Essence Magazine's 2019 Woke 100. She is a proud alum of Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity (BOLD) and a priest of Ṣàngó (of the West African Indigenous Yoruba Ifa tradition) for over 18 years.
Fresh Moves Mobile Market
|
|
